Databricks, provider of the leading Unified Analytics Platform powered by Apache Spark, today announced general availability of Microsoft Azure Databricks. Azure Databricks is Databricks' Unified Analytics Platform offered as an integrated service within the Azure cloud platform. Organizations from around the globe using Azure Databricks are now deriving value from their Big Data and realizing the promise of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Designed by Databricks in collaboration with Microsoft, Azure Databricks combines the best of Databricks' Spark-based cloud service and Azure to help customers accelerate innovation with one-click set up, streamlined workflows and an interactive workspace that enables collaboration between data scientists, data engineers, and business analysts. The integrated service provides Databricks' Unified Analytics Platform integrated with the Azure cloud platform, encompassing the Azure Portal; Azure Active Directory; and other data services on Azure, including Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Data Lake Store; and Microsoft Power BI.

Customers Successfully Use Azure Databricks

Azure Databricks was launched into preview in November 2017 during Microsoft Connect();.

Lennox International is a global leader in the heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration markets. "At Lennox International, we supply WiFi enabled thermostats. With Microsoft Azure Databricks, we moved from 60 percent efficiency to 94 percent efficiency on detecting switch failures. Using Azure Databricks has opened the flood gates to all kinds of new use cases inside Lennox International. In our previous process, 15 devices in 15 homes, which create 2 million records, took 6 hours to process. With Azure Databricks, we are able to process 25,000 homes - 10 billion records - in 14 minutes." - Sunil Bondalapati, director of Information Technology at Lennox International

E.ON is an international private energy company. "Every day, we analyse nearly a terabyte of wind turbine data to optimize our data models. Before, that took several hours. With Microsoft Azure Databricks, it takes a few minutes. This opens a whole range of possible new applications."​ - Sam Julian, product owner, Data Services, E.ON​

"Microsoft Azure Databricks has proven to be the most efficient way for us to meet customer demand for Spark on Azure. We experienced a lot of interest and engagement in the preview from organizations in need of a high-performance analytics platform based on Spark. With Azure Databricks, deeply integrated with services like Azure SQL Data Warehouse, our customers are now positioned to increase productivity and collaboration and globally scale analytics and data science projects on a trusted, secure cloud environment." - Rohan Kumar, corporate vice president, Azure Data, Microsoft Corp.

"Our collaboration with Microsoft builds on our momentum as a leading cloud platform for Apache Spark-based analytics. The ability to provide our Unified Analytics Platform to all Microsoft Azure users in such an integrated fashion is invaluable to end users looking to simplify big data and AI." - Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO of Databricks